June 2012

Russian Internet policy at odds with that of Western countries

Nearly all Western Internet users believe in the general principles of information-sharing that date back to the Enlightenment-era values of freedom of expression. Or, expressed more succinctly in the 20th century: information wants to be free. But, says Keir Giles, a veteran Russia analyst at the Conflict Studies Research Center in the United Kingdom, the Kremlin doesn’t quite see things the same way. “The main principles are reversed,” he said, speaking at the opening day of the International Conference on Cyber Conflict in the Estonian capital, which will continue throughout the week. “Whereas we [in the West] have a tendency to treat [cyber policy] in isolation, Russia and China take it more holistically, as part of information policy.”

Stuxnet expert calls US the "good guys" in cyber-warfare

Sitting in the front row for the first full day of the International Conference on Cyber Conflict was one of the industry’s foremost “rock star” researchers, Ralph Langner. The German researcher has become one of the most-cited sources on Stuxnet, the US-and-Israeli computer worm that targeted Iran's nuclear program.

Langner's 2011 TED talk has been seen over half a million times, and he spoke at last year’s CyCon here in Estonia. He’s less worried about "Flame," a new piece of espionage malware that analysts here say has yet to be fully understood. At the moment, it also appears to specifically target Iran. “Flame is nothing really new. It doesn't bring any new qualities,” he said. “Cyber-espionage has been conducted for years. Duqu, the German [state trojan] does similar things—it can turn on the microphone for voice messages. It's not new. Espionage attacks are occurring worldwide on a daily basis and for purposes of state espionage. In my opinion, Flame might be a little bit overhyped.”

What happens when a newspaper is just another digital voice?

The fact that print is declining as a medium for journalism, and that newspapers are going to have to deal with that in a variety of ways, was brought home with a thud recently when Advance Publications and Postmedia announced they would no longer print some of their papers on certain days, in order to save money. In the case of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the loss of the printed version of the paper three days a week has been criticized as almost a dereliction of public duty by the paper’s owner — as though something digital doesn’t have as much force as the printed version. As more newspapers are forced to make similar decisions, what impact will that have on their ability to serve a public purpose as an information source about the community?

5 ways your ISP’s failure to move to IPv6 could affect you

June 6, 2012 is World IPv6 Launch Day, a time when ISPs, major websites and network engineers will permanently flip the switch over a different form of addressing system.

For the most part, the IPv6 transition will go unnoticed and few will care about what is an arcane and important element of Internet architecture. But here’s where things may go wrong as IPv4 lingers. At its heart the IPv6 addressing issue is exactly that… a big change to a new type of address. Every device that is hooked up to a network, be it your iPad or a Facebook server, has an IP address so routers know where to send the packets that make up your Facebook profile or your Netflix stream. Sadly, back in 1980s when the lords of the net were thinking up an address scheme, they used IPv4, which only allows for a 32-bit address and about 4.2 billion total IP addresses.

Here’s how the delay in shifting to IPv6 and the reliance on a workaround could affect you:

Trouble with iTunes or Google Maps: Certain apps such as Google Maps or iTunes use more than one port to communicate back to the service and because users would be sharing one or just a few IP addresses, those ports may not be available.
Security: When users share one IP address, the ISP generally creates an abstraction layer to determine where the packets need to go to in the home. But this abstraction layer becomes a security risk. By attacking one IP address, a hacker could take down or infect all Internet-connected devices in a home. It becomes a single point of failure.
Court orders and DMCA takedowns: Shared IP addresses can make it hard for an ISP to determine who is actually downloading copyright materials. This actually may not upset end users or the ISPs as long as no one gets dragged into court as part of a hunt for settlement dollars.
Pixellated YouTube videos: The workarounds associated with either sharing a single IP address among a block of users or even a block of homes is just one option. Another is running both networks simultaneously and translating traffic between them. This adds some computational overhead and latency that in CableLab tests caused there to be delays in streaming and receiving HTTP video packets.
Stories about IPv6: As long as networks linger in the land of IPv4 every June, it’s possible you will have to see headlines talking about the need to get everyone to transition to IPv6. Hopefully, ISPs and major web sites are getting on the ball.

What is IPv6, and why does it matter?

June 6, 2012 marks the launch of a new era for the Internet — the switch to IPv6. Great, you say. What does that mean?

In really simple terms, it means that the Internet is expanding its address directory. Right now, there are 4.3 billion IP (internet protocol) addresses on the Internet, meaning that there’s a unique address for 4.3 billion devices to connect to the Web. With the launch of IPv6, which assigns addresses in a new way, that number can grow — to 340 trillion, trillion trillion. And believe it or not, we need the room. Most people shouldn’t see a difference in their daily Web use, though people who can only connect to the old protocol may have trouble seeing sites using only IPv6, but all the launch partners are running both protocols in parallel.

Did Google Fiber just get its own Google TV set-top box?

Google’s fiber plans are starting to take shape with the reveal of a yet-to-be launched residential gateway that popped up on the Federal Communications Commission’s website this week (hat tip to Engadget).

The box, which is manufactured by Humax, spots a label featuring the Google Fiber logo, which suggests that it will be used in the company’s high-speed fiber network trial in Kansas City. Of course, Google doesn’t want to say anything about the box. A Google spokesperson only sent me the following statement: “We’re still exploring what product offerings will be available when we launch Google Fiber in Kansas City and we have nothing to announce at this time.” The device goes by the name GFHD100, and details remain scarce: Key documents were redacted for confidentiality, so we won’t get to see the user’s manual or any schematics. However, the test report reveals that the box is an “IP set-top box” that comes with at least one USB port, an Ethernet port, AV out, IR, Wi-Fi, an Ethernet-Coax bridge and HDMI in and out.

Why Content Is The New Currency

[Commentary] These news items recently caught our attention: P&G shifting money from marketing to social media. And GM walking away from advertising on Facebook. Question: Are these events contradictory or complementary?

The answer is that they are complementary. If you answered otherwise, you need to go back and review the last 15 years of digital evolution. If you got the answer correct, then what are you doing about it? Please understand that the story here is not the demise of advertising. Rather, it's the rise of content. While GM may be cutting the $10 million it spends on Facebook ads, it has no inclination to cut the $30 million it spends annually to create content for Facebook. That's because unlike the advertising, the content is delivering results. Across the digital world marketers are learning the same lesson -- advertising, and more significantly the marketing funnel as we have known it, are becoming ineffective tools for influencing how consumers move to purchase. Consumers are no longer willing to be shoved down the path to purchase, like meat being pushed through a grinder. [Copilevitz is a digital strategist at IQ]

Judge Rejects Amazon's Bid To Dismiss Privacy Lawsuit

In a mixed ruling, a federal judge has narrowed a potential class-action privacy lawsuit alleging that Amazon thwarted users' attempts to block tracking cookies. But U.S. District Court Judge Robert Lasnik in Seattle rejected the online retailer's bid to completely dismiss the case.

The lawsuit stems from allegations that Amazon circumvented privacy filters built into the Internet Explorer browser by giving wrong information to the browser. The consumers who filed suit alleged that Amazon violated a federal computer fraud law, as well as Washington consumer protection law. The consumers sued shortly after researchers at Carnegie Mellon published a study concluding that many Web companies thwart users' privacy settings by providing incorrect data to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. That browser has long enabled users to automatically reject tracking cookies, but the feature only works when Web site operators provide accurate data about their privacy policies. The lawsuit alleges that Amazon sent "gibberish" to the browser, rather than using a readable code. Judge Lasnik dismissed the computer fraud charges on the theory that the consumers didn't allege that Amazon caused them economic injury. The computer fraud allegation at the center of the lawsuit requires damages of at least $5,000.

Politico goes for ‘fair and balanced’

Last week, Politico rocked the insidery world of political journalism with an article, written by executive editor Jim VandeHei and chief White House reporter Mike Allen, that criticized The New York Times and The Washington Post for media bias.

VandeHei and Allen sacrificed accuracy for angle, giving Republican operatives an uncritical platform to accuse the Times and Post -- who, as GQ’s Devin Gordon points out, just happen to be Politico’s chief competitors -- of covering Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney more harshly than they cover President Barack Obama. The piece fixates on two recent stories about Romney and their supposed “implications.” The Times’s recent front-page story about Ann Romney’s involvement in the obscure sport of dressage, for example, is hardly a hit piece, but to VandeHei and Allen, it has a “clear implication” that “the Romneys are silly rich, move in rarefied and exotic circles, and are perhaps a tad shady.” Politico is also critical of the Post’s recent scoop about Mitt Romney’s high-school years, a story that includes the previously-unreported fact that he once held down a classmate and cut off his long hair. The “clear implication” this time? “Romney was a mean, insensitive jerk.” And the “clear implication” of the Politico piece? That such critical coverage of Obama never gets prominent play in the Times or the Post.

FCC Looks to Regulate Middle-mile Connections

The Federal Communications Commission will look into new regulations of middle-mile broadband connections used by many businesses and owned largely by AT&T and Verizon Communications, the agency said. On June 4, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski circulated a proposal to reform the rates of so-called special access services, the large-pipe connections used by businesses and mobile carriers to connect to the Internet. Verizon and AT&T, which control by some estimates 80 percent of special access services in the U.S., have disputed the need for new regulations by saying the special access market is increasingly competitive. But several groups, including Sprint Nextel, Public Knowledge and XO Communications, have long complained that AT&T and Verizon are charging too much.

Benton

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